When a person is sensed using an electronic flash, a so-called pink-eye effect in which his/her pupil is sensed in pink occurs. To prevent this pink-eye effect, various methods have conventionally been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-175699 discloses a technique of reading by a scanner an image recorded on a film, displaying the read image on a display at a low resolution, and when a region including the eye of the object person image is designated for pink-eye correction, displaying the designated region at a high resolution before or after the pink-eye correction process. This reference describes that this method improves the workability of pink-eye correction without decreasing the productivity of outputting an image by a digital photo printer.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-341279 discloses a technique of, when an image recorded on a film is read by a scanner and a pink eye is detected from the read image and corrected, parallel-displaying a pink-eye image to be corrected and a reference image for correction on a display, thereby facilitating confirmation of the final quality of a corrected image, and increasing the pink-eye correction precision.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-13680 discloses a digital camera having an image processing apparatus which detects a pink eye contained in an image and corrects the pink eye to a predetermined color. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-13680 describes a method in which automatic recognition and manual designation of a pink-eye region can be switched, and the recognized or designated pink-eye region is enlarged and displayed.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-305141 discloses a technique of detecting a pink eye contained in an image, emphatically displaying the pink eye on a display, and thereby ensuring the pink-eye correction precision without decreasing the pink-eye visibility even on the small-size display of a digital camera.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-148780 discloses a method in which, when an image recorded on a film is read by a scanner and a pink eye is detected from the read image and corrected, automatic recognition and manual designation of a pink-eye region can be switched, and the designated pink-eye region is enlarged and displayed.
Japanese Patent-Laid-Open No. 10-91761 discloses a method in which, when a pink eye contained in an image is detected and corrected, automatic correction and manual correction of the pink eye can be switched, and in automatic correction, a catchlight position and a color after correction are designated, and the pink eye is corrected with the designated color while the color tone is changed from the catchlight position toward the periphery of the eye, thereby realizing more natural pink-eye correction.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-12371 discloses a camera system having an image processing apparatus which detects a pink eye contained in an image and corrects the pink eye to a predetermined color. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-12371 discloses a technique of storing together with an image a flag representing the possibility of occurrence of a pink eye upon image sensing/recording and a flag representing that pink-eye correction has been done after the pink eye is corrected, and in playing back images, not performing pink-eye correction on the basis of these flags for a pink eye-corrected image and an image which need not be corrected.
As described above, more appropriate pink-eye correction can be achieved by displaying an image during pink-eye correction and a pink eye-corrected image. However, only an image is displayed, and it cannot be determined whether pink-eye correction has accurately been done, pink-eye correction intentionally has not been executed, or pink-eye correction has been tried but is determined to be unnecessary.